Abbe Boulah’s Weblog

> Hey Vodçek — are you starting a new trend in your famed Tavern — trying to revive the grand tradition of European Coffee houses a century ago, of providing daily newspapers for the customers to educate themselves on the evolution of the world’s affairs?
– Are you referring to the paper our esteemed professor Balthus is reading over there, Bog-Hubert? Sorry. He brought that over himself on his trip to the mainland yesterday. And it doesn’t seem to improve his mood, from the looks of it. So while I did think about your idea — not daily papers, but magazines like the New York Review of Books, out here people have the time to read those articles — I may have to rethink that. Even letting them bring in daily papers with bad news. Like the old rules ‘deliver your weapons and wet rain-gear at the reception desk’ Including Mullet Wrappers. Can’t have my customers get even more depressed than they are when they come in here for relief…
> Vodçek, Vodçek — you don’t even have a reception desk nor a maitre d’…
– A Tavern keeper can dream, can’t he? Well, I could have somebody carve a wooden one at the door, with nails to hang stuff on…?
> Can’t wait to see it. So do you have an idea what depressing news Professor Balthus is reading?
– Well, there seems to be a lot of it. He told me about one sad thing a while ago, sighing heavily — it wasn’t even news but an obituary.
> That can do it all right — a friend of his died?
– No, he didn’t even know the dearly departed.
> Are you worried about the fact that he’s down to reading the obits? We’re all getting there. Signs of a certain…maturity? But then again, the papers consists mostly of ever larger pictures these days, rather than news; so maybe there wasn’t much other news to read?
– Perhaps. It was the obituary relating, as the first remarkable item of his life, how the fellow had always been wearing his university baseball cap whenever he went outside. As a sign of his undying support of his alma mater, where he also worked for most of his life.
> Well, what’s wrong with that? Other than that your term ‘undying’ probably isn’t the best word here… Supporting a grand educational institution that enriches the knowledge and spirit of our young people, isn’t that a good thing?
– Now, Bog-Hubert my friend, how would you like to be remembered for the scruffy piece of headwear you use to cover up your bald spot, that you don’t even take off inside?
> Oooh, touché my substitute toupé. Sorry. Yes, perhaps you are right. Sailing off into that unknown night may be worrisome enough, especially if you don’t have much more to show for it than your cap to signal your dedication to something.
– Yes, something you can’t even claim credit for, any more that the touchdowns of your favorite football team…
> Makes you think all right. What would we want to be remembered for? Please, pour me a glass of that Sonoma Zin to think about it. Hallo, good evening, professor — Vodçek told me about that obituary you were reading in the Mullet Wrapper. Anything to help cheer you up after that depressing news? Join me in testing a glass of Zin?
o Hi Bog-Hubert, thanks. Zin, huh? Okay. In spite of the dubious alliterative associations. While we are talking about what we’d want to be remembered for?
– Well, not everybody can become famous leaders and statesmen or Nobel prize winners, eh?
> Like the great leaders who got famous by starting wars and having thousands of people killed? And then getting streets named after them? Statues in the squares? Even if some of those monuments are toppled if they lose the war, streets renamed for the general of the other army? There’s got to be a better way.
o Better way of what? Inventing an new and improved pesticide? Resolving conflicts between nations, quarrels that will be forgotten together with your name, precisely by virtue of having been resolved? Or being remembered for glorious victories?
> Putting it that way: if you were in a position to make war or peace, you’d want both? But it looks like that’s not as easy as it sounds.
o You are so right. But why is it that there seem to be more of those guys who are gambling on being the winning warmonger, than people who are successful avoiding the violent confrontations?
– More interesting boys toys? Aircraft carriers and MOABs and smart bombs and multi-million-dollar warplanes and the ultimate power gizmo: the red button for the start of the nuclear war?
> Coming to think about that — there may not be anybody around to remember even who won or lost that kind of altercation…
o Okay, so what would you do about the crises that keep coming up, that threaten to escalate into real wars? Or already have? Syria? North Korea? The Spratly issue?
* Spratly who?
o Haven’t read the paper, huh, Renfroe? No, right, it wasn’t in the paper, but in that book review magazine: the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Some small, barren islands, not much more than reefs, really, from what I hear. Where the Chinese are filling in sand and soil to make them larger and declaring them part of China, even though they are much closer to the Philippines.
> So what about that — if they are building up the islands so people can live there, what’s the crisis?
o   Well, it seems that they don’t do it just for people to build some family homes with a front and back yard. Looks like they think there’s oil underneath those islands. So the enlargements are for ports and oil rigs and airports — and for military bases to protect those.
> Wouldn’t that be a good thing too, have China a little less dependent on coal that’s now polluting the air there to the point where Beijingers have to walk around with breathing masks all the time?  That pollution is blown to other countries as well, and on the whole contributes to the weather issues that can’t be named in the US budget anymore?
– Would it be better if they’d build solar or wind power installations there, is that what you re saying? I mean, better than to replace one fossil fuel with another, that’s only a little less polluting than coal?
o Good point. But regardless what they are building there, there’s another implication that is worrying not only the countries around there but the whole international community depending on shipping.
–  Can you explain that? Ah — I think I see what you are talking about. Control of shipping lanes?
o  Excellent, Vodçek. Yes. If they ‘take possession’ of those islands, which they already claim they own, based on centuries-old records, by the way — with the customary waters extending so many miles from the shores around those islands, they will in effect control the entire South China Sea and its shipping lanes, as a kind of inland lake. Which will put them into a much more powerful position to dominate their neighbors around that sea — the Philippines, mainly, but also Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Borneo, Thailand etc. but any other nations who are using those shipping lanes for their trading and supplies.
– And make it more difficult and costly for the US, for example, to ‘protect’ the interests of those poor nations, with its aircraft carriers and battleships.
o Right. By the way, those other nations are claiming ownership of those islands, and building ports, bases, airports and the like out there, on different reefs and islands.
* Is there anything else on those islands? Do they even have drinkable water?
o   Just fish — and the possibility of oil and gas. Water? Not to my knowledge.
> Let them drink Zinfandel. But it sounds like a powder keg all right. Wasn’t there already some violent altercation some time ago, involving the Chinese and Vietnam? So what can be done about that? Is anything being done?
–   I think I heard about the Philippines complaining about that to the United Nations…
> Yeah, and with both small and big powers on the Security Council having blatantly ignored or failed to do anything about dozens if not hundreds of United Nations resolutions, are the Chinese going to pay any attention to that?
o Not likely. So our intrepid leader is sending our warships over there. For ‘exercises’.
> Really? That’s really asking for trouble, don’t you think?
* Why?
> Ah, Renfroe, that can’t be done indefinitely, can it? Not if you intend to keep your campaign promises of reducing the federal budget, eh? And is it going to ‘resolve’ the intentions of China just by sailing the carriers up and down the South China Sea, wasting money? Sooner or later, there’s going to be an ‘incident’. In response to which all the intrepid leaders involved will feel compelled to take ‘decisive action’ for which they will be remembered, remember? Which will become an expensive and bloody mess for everybody else.
– Hmm. So what would you do instead? Take over one of those islands, plant the flag there, claim it as the number fifty-something state, enlarge the size of it, and claim the shipping lanes?
> I can see building something like that one those reefs. Yeah! Collect all the garbage floating in the oceans and use it as part of the landfill. Even enlarge the existing islands with floating cities and land — fish farms, wind and wave and solar power generation, — that we can sell to the Philippines.
–   Or give the places to the Philippines outright, to manage and exploit.
>  You sly devil: you just want to make sure the Philippines will be on our side for any power struggles over there. Diplomacy, my scruffy headgear…
> Why not move the United Nations out there? Or the Eastern Hemisphere branch of it?
o   This kind of diplomacy-brainstorming is getting interesting. Next you’ll come up with a different version of that crazy idea of transforming the UN by declaring all the US states to be independent nations, with their own seats in the UN, thereby creating a very different balance of the voting balances in the UN General Assembly — wasn’t that on the platform of this weirdo who announced his run for president in the abandoned gas station in Sopchoppy? His one and only rally. Promising to dissolve the US as his first and only executive action before stepping down and out, thereby confusing all the US enemies who all of a sudden didn’t have their bedeviled enemy to cuss out anymore… Never heard about it? So now you want to create even more so-called nations to be our friends?
– Sure: just think about it: Get Abbé Boulah to sell the UN on starting many more Rigatopia-style communities out there — for refugees and as research prototypes for such settlements in many other places: experiments with alternative governance systems. Research stations, new International universities, conference centers… Ellmau and Davos are soo last millennium, eh…?
> And vacation destinations: Club South China Sea, or renamed after the glorious leader who’s going to do this. Rename the whole archipelago. Who was Spratly, anyway?
o   Some British captain who ‘discovered’ one of those islands in the 1800’s and lived to tell about it — the whole area is so treacherous for navigation that the mariners call it ‘Dangerous Grounds’, so earlier ships straying into it were not likely to get out. Now people can fly in and out; the main thing they are building is air strips. Renfroe, you seem to have an idea?
* Yeah, yeah: Gambling casinos to finance the whole thing…
> Ahh.  What’s the matter, Vodçek: you suddenly look — how do the Norwegians call it — so moolefoonk? You don’t like this?
– Sorry: I’m going to have to cut you guys off. Who’s going to come to this lowly Tavern anymore if somebody starts implementing your ideas…?